Already afflicted with a somewhat melancholic disposition, and thus inclined to take a dim view of almost everything, I’ve recently found it more difficult than ever to get a laugh out of life. Or, for that matter, out of death.

It’s been hard to see the funny side, for example, of my beloved youngest sister’s life-and-death struggle with cancer, or my dear wife’s impending spinal surgery.

But my sister’s unquenchable sense of humour has not only helped her come smiling through two major operations, but also keep her surgeon and nurses in stitches during her time in hospital, and even dispel the gloom I would otherwise feel at the one-to-five-year prognosis she’s recently been given.

And my wife’s incredible capacity for generous, not to say gila, good cheer and ceaseless care for others despite her killing work and study schedules help me feel far more light-hearted than I otherwise would about her forthcoming surgical ordeal.

I am more uncharacteristically light-hearted, too, about my own increasingly urgent intimations of mortality. So much so that, when a thoracic surgeon recently told me that chest scans revealed a lesion that looked alarmingly likely lung cancer, I found myself feeling not so much devastated by the news, as wryly amused.

After all, I couldn’t help thinking, after smoking cigarettes for 55 years despite knowing full well the dangers of doing so, I could hardly deny that the joke was on me.

More tests, however, showed that I was still in the clear, lung cancerwise, and thus could revert to my customary state of growing anxiety that at my age I’m certain of dying of something or other, if not cancer, and increasingly sooner rather than later.

This is a fact that I try to not just confront but also laugh in the face of, as I mentioned above that my sister does, by engaging in what is commonly called “gallows humour”.

My favourite two examples of this, at least of all those I’ve seen so far, being Woody Allen’s deathless declaration that “I’m not afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens”, and Mark Twain’s immortal observation that “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it”.

Inconveniences of life

Life, on the other hand, as Twain was well aware and made a great deal of fun of, can be very inconvenient indeed. Especially for those of us who suffer, to a lesser or greater or more often extreme extent from others’ greed.

Greed for so much more than their fair share of possessions, that they’re happy to keep the vast majority of people poor. Greed for so much more than their proper portion of power, that they imprison whole populations in peonage.

And perhaps most gruesome of all, greed for so much more life than they’re due that they enslave themselves and their followers in creeds claiming to deliver the fantasy of eternal existence in imaginary locations like “heaven” and “hell”.

Plutocracies, or rule by and for the rich, as in most of the capitalist West; kleptocracies or rule by and for the criminal, as in most of Asia, Africa and Central and South America; and theocracies or rule by and for the allegedly “religious” as in most of the Middle East and increasingly in South-East Asia; or combinations of two or more of these in virtual dictatorships like China and Russia, afflict the vast majority of us in our all-too-fleeting lives.

And most of us are powerless to fight them, as the Syrian opposition so resolutely persists in fighting their revolting al-Assad regime, with force of arms.

In fact, inhabitants of the most outrageous totalitarian nightmares like North Korea and China, and theo-totalitarian sponsors of terrorism like Saudi Arabia and its ilk, can be imprisoned or killed for criticising, let alone scorning their dictatorial so-called governments.

Power of ridicule

But at least the rest of us can attack these and similarly appalling regimes, not to mention the often atrocious relatively democratic governments of our own that we misguidedly vote into power, with the most powerful weapon we’re armed with - ridicule.

Starting with the ruling coalition in my own country, Australia, which recently staged a “plebiscite” in which an approximately two-thirds majority of Australians voted “yes” to granting marriage equality to same-sex couples.

While on the surface this seems like a happy result, it actually deserves a derisive laugh because the AUS$120-million plebiscite was intended as a delaying tactic by the conservative wing of the government, and is not binding on Parliament.

It is also laughable for Australians to be so in favour of equal rights for people in marriage, but to be not even consulted, let alone polled, on the issue of the disgraceful denial by this and several former governments of human rights to asylum-seekers imprisoned for years in detention camps.

Along with a great many other Australians, I also have to laugh at many other ridiculous attitudes and antics of the nation’s ruling coalition, like its scandalous denial of climate change, refusal to reform a grossly-inequitable tax system, and other policies so ludicrously anti-liberal that the majority coalition Liberal party should in truth be renamed Lieberal.

Meanwhile, on the wider world stage, there’s been so much to scorn lately that there’s room here to list just a few. Everything US President Donald Trump says and does, for example, from his support and praise for the homicidal lunatic President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, to his characterisation of a recent mass shooting at a US church as not about guns, but about mental health, makes him look dumber than Donald Duck.

Similarly laughable is the military coup against Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe (or rather, given his evidently growing senility, Mugagabe) that’s apparently designed to thwart his big-spending spouse, “Gucci Grace”, from succeeding him as head of the Zanu-PF kleptocracy.

I also had to laugh last week at the possibility that the Mugagabe could well end up in Malaysia, as he’s a longtime crony of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and also reportedly has some of his ill-gotten loot invested in Malaysian real estate.

And speaking of Malaysia, the ever-ruling BN regime is as ludicrously Umno as ever, as is its Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Zahid Hamidi, given his latest of many claims that he has insight into the motivations of Allah, this time stating that the Penang floods were the Almighty’s punishment for the state’s rule by an opposition party.

Perhaps Hamidi has never heard the old line that “when you imagine you’re talking to God it’s called praying; when you imagine God’s talking to you it’s called schizophrenia”.

Whatever, it’s way past time that Hamidi and Umno were laughed out of power. But I fear that’s not about to happen as long as they have the support of Malaysia’s risible police force, judiciary, election commission, mainstream news media and other such institutions, thanks to the legacy of Mahathir.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include “Mad about Malaysia,” “Even Madder about Malaysia,” “Missing Malaysia,” “1Malaysia.con” and “Malaysia Mania.”

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.